


Imitation of Life

by squeequeg



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Crack Pairing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squeequeg/pseuds/squeequeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the kinkmeme prompt: "Doujima/Izanami. She is fully aware of the irony, yes, thankyouverymuch. But she'll never tell him. Or Nanako, for that matter. Definitely not Nanako."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imitation of Life

Defeat rankled.

It would be one thing to have been defeated by a god -- and for a long time, she consoled herself with the thought that, technically, she had been. Without her husband and counterpart's power, she would have sunk the brat deep in a thousand curses, never to emerge. That had not happened; ergo, her defeat could be ascribed to divine intervention.

It was too easy an answer, though, and not one that satisfied her. Yes, fine, the brat had used her husband's power, but  _how_  had he gotten his mortal hands on that power? Not by her intervention, surely; the shred of Izanagi she had bestowed on him was barely enough to harass a minor shadow. For a time she was tempted to blame that human-shaped thing in its velvet-draped chamber, but the rules binding it were clear: it could act as facilitator, not a direct giver of power.

No, the question was the brat himself -- and, she was convinced, something he'd done in Inaba. Which made even less sense, because she'd been in Inaba almost the whole time, and even before he arrived.

 _The hearts of those you formed the deepest bonds with become your strength_ , that thing had told him before Izanagi-no-Okami had manifested. Ridiculous. Human interactions were based on shadows and fog; they had no power, and certainly not enough to hurt her. They must be a subterfuge.

So the question was simple: either there was something to this "deepest bonds" idea, or the brat had access to some vaster power . . . in which case, she'd be perfectly justified in dropping a curse on him and his lineage for a few generations.

With all this in mind, Izanami returns her gaze to Inaba and prepares to find out the truth. She cannot carry it out in her old guise; too many people remember the Moel attendant, especially the rabble who ran around with the brat. Show up in that form, and they'd know something was up.

So she constructs a different shape. Youth is beyond her (and too risky besides), but a tall woman of aristocratic bearing, gray hair that could be either early or fitting depending on how you looked at it, skin like fog touched by the sun -- all that is assembled quick as breathing. Not that she does breathe, but the expression stands.

And so she embodies herself, and puts on a smile, and goes out to be part of this web of human interactions.

* * *

It is, as she predicted, a colossal failure. 

How the brat could stand bothering with these people for more than a day or so is beyond her. The proprietor of the ramen shop where she arranged a job screams at her through the interview, repeatedly pronouncing dishes unsatisfying even as his patrons disagree. The old couple walking in the park snare her in the most insipid, endless conversation ever. Even the little boy looking for his lost dog by the shrine only stares at her when she offers to help, then bursts into tears and runs away.

(The fox, seeing her, just laughs. She really hates that fox.)

The whole thing is enough, she decides as she stands at a railing overlooking the town, to make her unleash the fog on them anyway, promises or no. Her lips part, and a stream of mist drifts from her mouth.

"Did they exile you too?"

Only the day's work reminds her to snap back to normal as she turns. The man on the other side of the lamppost from her grins sheepishly and brandishes his cigarette, trailing its own line of white smoke. "Few enough places to catch a smoke these days, even outside."

Something about him is familiar, but that's not why she conjures her own false cigarette and raises it as if in a toast. "Few enough,' she replies. "Though I'm mostly out here to clear my head."

He returns the toast with a widening of his smile and takes a drag on his cigarette. He looks disheveled, but in a way that implies it's a permanent state for him; the jacket over his shoulder is threadbare but carefully clean, and his red tie looks as if it's never been tied properly. "Half the time that's the reason I come out here," he says out of the corner of his mouth. "Of course, you associate one with the other long enough, and, well." He shrugs.

"And the artificial connection is made where no natural one exists." She chuckles and lifts the cigarette to her lips, letting another puff of mist free -- not the kind that would envelop a town, but mist nonetheless, and it feels good to do so.

"That's one way to put it." He's watching her openly, not bothering to hide his curiosity. She can respect that. "I don't think I've seen you in any of the other smoker's havens."

"You wouldn't have," she says, and inside she laughs at the idea of him seeing her anywhere. "I'm new around here."

"Really? Well, welcome to Inaba, then. It's a quiet town; you'll probably be bored."

The echo of her own sentiments sends a brief chill through her, and she attempts to mask it with scorn. Before she can craft a suitably scathing reply, a merry chime sounds, and he slaps at his coat pocket. "Call for you?" she says dryly.

"No. Alarm." He holds up the phone so she can see the screen: a beaming little girl with her hair in pigtails. "So I can be home in time to see my daughter." He tucks away the phone and stubs out his cigarette. "I used to be terrible about it -- worked so hard I barely saw her. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf."

There are no "new leaves," she wants to snarl, but the picture has reminded her that she does know this man. The brat's uncle, the one who called himself a "detective" but couldn't see the truth right in front of him.

"Maybe I'll see you at another spot for us exiles," he says, swinging the coat over his shoulder again.

"Hey," she says, and he turns back to look at her. "I'm Nami."  _There,_  she thinks,  _have my name practically gift-wrapped and handed to you, and you still won't see the truth._

 __He raises one eyebrow. "Ah. Well, Miss Nami --" <

"Just Nami. I hate honorifics."

The other eyebrow goes up, but he smiles back at her. "Well, Nami, I'm Ryotaro. I hope I'll see you again soon."

* * *

He does, even if it means she has to embody herself again. But it gives her a reason to keep on with the test. It does not make sense that the only enjoyable interaction outweighs all the others, but it does.

She spins a story for him of who she is and what she's doing here: the manager of a large resort, she claims, on sabbatical and seeking ways to revitalize her resort. "Revitalize" is his word, not hers, and she takes a long drag of fog to cover her amusement at his choice. It's not the same as the stories she tells others, and a few questions around town would prove that. But he never asks why the ramen shop hired a manager for such menial work, nor why the little boy thinks she used to be a vet's assistant. ( _See,_  she tells herself,  _more proof that no one bothers to look beyond to the truth._

Instead, he matches her stories with his own; cooking disasters with his daughter (his fault), station politics, even what he calls "Inaba's Most Stupid," the petty criminals with the dumbest excuses. The first time he makes her laugh, it's with one of these -- a pickpocket who'd apparently come to the conclusion that clothes slowed him down, and so tried to strip while leading the police on a foot chase, ending up shuffling across the road with his pants around his ankles. The sensation of laughter is unusual enough that she has to put her head down to recover.

If it wasn't for him, she thinks, she'd junk this whole idea and get on with the cursing. The more she gets to know the people of Inaba, the more she despises them, and the change of March to April does nothing to change that. The manager at the ramen shop is never satisfied, not even when the food critics are weeping over his noodles. Mia and Mio, the nauseatingly cute old couple, slowly reveal that the lovey-dovey bit is no more than an act. Even Jiro, though he accepts her help in putting up posters for his lost dog, badmouths his parents the whole time for their lack of willingness to help. (The dog, Izanami knows, is dead and in her realm, but bringing up that possibility gets her a kick in the shins.)

But Ryotaro smiles when he sees her arrive at one of the little "havens," or if she's there already his steps quicken as he approaches. So she keeps coming back, even as April shades into May, frustrating as it is. "It's like everyone prefers to live in their own little reality," she complains to him, having veiled her problem with false names and anonymity. "Like they're all happier believing a lie."

Ryotaro doesn't respond immediately. The smoke of his cigarette hangs in a cloud over their heads, separate from her fog, which sinks to wreathe her pale shoulders. "Sometimes that's true," he says finally. "But it's not something you can hold against them."

"No?" She bites off the word, feels her eyes flare, closes them before they can give her away.

"Not really." He stubs out what's left of his cigarette, then turns and leans back against the railing. "Sometimes it's less painful. Sometimes it's only a door to more pain." He takes out another cigarette but doesn't light it yet, instead turning it between his fingers. "I had a partner once," he says slowly.

Ah yes. Emptiness. Izanami remembers him with mild disappointment. 

"I trusted him. Hell, I cared about him." His brow furrows, and he bows his head, shrinking into himself like a withering leaf. "And all the time he was doing these horrible things. Right under my nose."

"But you're glad you found out about it."

"Glad? Hell no. I mean, it's good that I know. I'd much rather know than not. But  _glad_?" He shakes his head, standing up straight. "Every time I think of how I was fooled, it's like getting punched in the ribs again." 

For just a second, she remembers the pain of Izanagi-no-Okami's Myriad Truths. 

"So yeah, I'm better off this way. But I can't blame anyone else for not wanting to go through something like that."

She's silent a long moment. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"No?" He flips the cigarette again, then smiles. "No, didn't think so. Give it a try." His phone chimes -- Nanako calling him home -- and he tucks the unlit cigarette behind his ear. "Hey, listen, I've got to be out of town tomorrow, but -- well -- same time Friday? I'll bring coffee."

"Yes. Sure." She's still a little rattled by the echo of pain. It's not something she built into this body; it must be a side effect of taking human form, something that comes with this imitation of life.

* * *

She doesn't want to admit it -- why would a goddess take inspiration from a mortal? -- but it does change how she views Inaba. As if her own mists were pulled aside, she begins to see what drives the people she's come to know. Take the ramen shop proprietor Noburo, for example. He's tyrannical in the kitchen, scornful of his patrons for accepting what he considers inferior work, intolerant of anything but perfection and convinced that there is no such thing as perfection. But looking past that, he's not doing so out of a desire to control everything. 

Talking with him -- not just playing the role of Nami, but really talking -- reveals that he's terrified that his sense of taste might falter someday. Over the polished tables, over cleanup, he describes the flawless dish he once made, broth that could have been drizzled from Heaven, pork cut from the belly of the Transcendent Pig, noodles that had made him weep and then turn his face away to keep from adding that salt to the broth. "Nothing I make will ever approach that," he sighs, his beady eyes soft and nostalgic. "Nothing."

"No," Nami agrees. "Perfection can never be attained twice."

Noburo looks up at that, momentarily furious, but the rage fades, and for the first time he smiles. "No. But these yokels wouldn't know perfection if it bit them on the asses, would they? So I might as well try to improve their palates so that they'll know what can come close. So one of them might find it someday and know it when they do."

He's a little less tyrannical after that, and once or twice she even catches him singing in the kitchen.

It's the same with the others as summer begins to rise around them. Mia and Mio may not be the happy couple they pretend to be, but that's because Mio is dying, so close to her realm she can almost feel him standing outside the door. Mia knows it as well as he does, and these days, the quiet walks, the sunrises, the roses -- are a last gift to him. Their history is less important than this moment; Mio even confides that he knows Mia does this out of kindness and confesses that he's still selfish enough to keep it. And there's nothing false about Mia's grief when, in midsummer, Nami finds her walking the park paths alone.

Even Jiro eventually admits to her that he knows his dog is dead, has always known it. But putting the posters up, writing to the newspaper, everything they've done -- it gave him the attention from his parents that he didn't dare ask for. Nami listens, takes down the posters with him, and has a quiet word with his parents. She's not sure whether it makes a difference to them, but it makes a difference to Jiro, who tells her he's going to be a veterinarian when he grows up.

The fox no longer laughs at her when she passes the shrine. Instead it watches her silently, eyes narrowed.

And at the center of it all, every day, is Ryotaro.

He brings her coffee -- not the stuff he promised her, since apparently the station coffee is worse than usual this week, but fresh from the shop at the corner. He tells her more stories of Inaba's Most Stupid, and each time the laughter comes easier. He even just stays with her, that afternoon after she finds Mia walking alone.

She's not yet convinced that this is what she meant to prove. Maybe it's the result of too much time in this body. But time passes, and summer comes in full, and somehow she doesn't call a halt to it. Ryotaro even teases her about it, asking if the resort she manages doesn't need her back. "I could ask you the same," she asks with a laugh. "Doesn't the station need you, instead of letting you sneak off for a smoke so often?"

"What, this old man? No, they're getting along well enough without me."

"You're not old," she says, turning to gaze out over the river, thinking of millennia and the eyeblink of a human life.

"Gray up top says so. Though you're just as gray as me, it's just more -- hang on, you've got something in your hair --"

She glances at him just as he brushes whatever-it-is out of her hair, and he freezes, staring at her. It's a hot, sticky day, but her hair and skin remain cool. His eyes are suddenly darker than before, and she notices the pulse in his throat, quickening like an animal's at bay. "Ah," he says, and snatches his hand away. "Are you -- will I see you at the summer festival tonight?"

"Festival?" Summer? She never intended to stay in Inaba this long.

"It's probably nothing like what you have at your resort, but it's still fun. Nanako will be there," he adds after a moment. "She'd like to meet you. And I'd like you to meet her."

"You told her about me?" It is perhaps the surprise that keeps her from acknowledging how bad this could be: summer, high season, and the way he looked at her just now . . .

"Of course." His smile is different, almost hesitant, and that, too, is new.

* * *

She decides on an extra layer of precaution: a glamor woven into her flesh so that any wandering youkai, should they be curious about this so-very-not-human guest, will only see her as a minor ayakashi out on a lark. Other things, though, stay defiantly the same. "No kimono?" Ryotaro asks when she joins them at the gates. 

She straightens the skirt of her stylish Western suit. "I'm not fond of them." It would be too easy to slip from that state to her goddess form. "Is it a problem?" she challenges.

Ryotaro looks her up and down -- her flesh tries to blush -- and shakes his head. "No. Actually, I rather like it." He steps aside, revealing a little girl in pink and gold. "Nanako, this is Nami."

Nanako, yes. The girl too young for a Shadow, who spent a week in a Heaven of her own construction and barely returned. She finds she is glad of the child's continued life -- even as her serious gaze rises to Nami's face.  _Here,_  she thinks,  _here is where it will fall apart, at a child's cry, as it did so long ago._

 __But the girl does not shriek and point at her, does not tear away the mask that Izanami in her contempt made so very fragile. Instead she bobs in a bow, then tugs at her father's sleeve. "Daddy, I wanted to see the goldfish."

Ryotaro grins and shrugs at Nami. "Then goldfish it is."

To Nami's utter shock, the girl grabs her hand and pulls her through the crowd. Ryotaro, laughing, follows them.

They indeed find goldfish, though Nami is careful not to breathe on them. They eat sticky dumplings, sweet and unbearably strange. Grave as a queen, Nanako orders Ryotaro to get them both something savory, then stands swinging her balloons with one hand and cradling the little bag with fishes in the other. "Dad talks about you a lot," she says.

"Does he?" 

"Yeah." She's silent a moment longer. "I can't take care of him so much these days. I've got soccer, and music practice. I'm growing up," she proclaims, perfectly serious and nine years old.

Nami chuckles. "Indeed."

"Yeah. So be nice to him, okay?"

The request startles her, and she catches her breath. Before she can demand what Nanako means, Ryotaro returns, three skewers of meat in one hand and a ridiculous mask in the other.

The brat's friends -- at some point she stopped thinking of them as rabble, and that worries her -- swarm up to take Nanako "to the best place for fireworks, like, ever," and she fades into the background. The hubbub of the friends' arrival and withdrawal is enough to conceal her absence, and it's then easy to join Ryotaro as he settles in on a stone wall. "Enthusiastic bunch," she says. 

"You don't know the half of it." He offers her a flask of sake, and the drink burns all the way down, settling like a coal in her stomach. "Some of them have calmed down a little, but that's not saying much."

For a time they only sit and watch the first sparks fly across the sky. His shoulder is warm, even from an inch away. After a while, she stops watching the fireworks and starts watching him, his profile in the changing light. He does not look much like her husband, she decides, even leaving aside the matter of divine beauty. The stubble on his cheek never seems to leave, even on the mornings he smells of aftershave, and there are lines at the corners of his eyes. There is none of the iron will of Izanagi, but there is something else -- like iron welded together again, like a repair.

No, she decides. He's really nothing like her husband.

Feeling her gaze, he turns to her. Again, his eyes are dark, darker than the evening can account for, and their gaze lowers to her mouth, then back to meet her eyes. "Nami," he says.

A screamer rocket goes off above, and the shrieks of consternation behind them fade into shrieks of laughter. When Nami looks back, he's turned away. "I'm glad you got a chance to meet Nanako," he says, more to the air in front of him than to her.

"Get dragged along in her wake is more like it," Nami says lightly, trying to cover the strange embodied feeling in her chest.

"Ha, yes, that too. But she likes you, I can tell. It just takes her a little while to warm up to people. She'll come around."

 _I am the mistress of the realm where she was held prisoned. She should not "warm up" to me._

 __The thought is swiftly followed by voices on the hill, and she shudders into the background again, into the mists that rise to join the smoke of the fireworks.

* * *

The matter gnaws at her. Her original plan, and Ryotaro's face in the fireworks light, and the utter wrongness of anyone "warming up" to her, all tangle together with her own history until it's as if she's bound in ropes made of thorns, and any effort to think her way free twists them tighter.

So when Ryotaro finds her the next morning, she's pacing under an awning, away from the rain that's swiftly turning the road to mud, cigarette unlit but mist gathering about her nonetheless. "Hey," he says, hurrying in out of the rain. "Didn't get a chance to say goodbye last night. That kid from Junes gave me crap about my 'invisible girlfri --'" He stops, fumbling with his umbrella. "Anyway. That kid gives everyone crap; my nephew sorted out some of it, but I swear it's in his bones."

"Uh-huh." She takes a savage drag of her false cigarette.

Ryotaro pauses, taking out his pack and tapping it against one hand. "What's wrong?"

"I've been thinking."  _And that's what's wrong._  She stops just under the corner of the awning, where the rain sheets down just past her fingertips.  _No more than human. No more than mortal. And shortsighted as all the living are, regardless of mortality._  "You were married, right? And your wife died."

"Chisato. Yes." And now his smile is gone, he knows this is a dangerous conversation, but still he stays.  _Fool._  "What about her?"

"You loved her. Don't -- it's not a question, Ryotaro, it's clear in everything you do." She steps back; he furls his umbrella and waits like a main on a gallows. "You'd have done anything to get her back." 

He bows his head a moment. "Yes. At the time, I would have."

"So let's say you did. Hypothetically speaking. Let's say --" He moves, either to speak or interrupt or just express his confusion, but she keeps talking, giving him no chance. "Let's say you stormed the very gates of hell to bring her back."

He nods, though a line has appeared between his brows. 

"And you did bring her back -- only when you did, she wasn't what you remembered. What you loved. Wouldn't that make your love for her a lie, if it turned out you'd gone all that way and she was  _still dead?_ "

Ryotaro gazes at her, a muscle in his jaw working. "This conversation's over," he says, shaking out his umbrella and stepping out into the rain.

 _See, not even he would face the truth if it were put before him._  "Not just dead, Ryotaro!" she calls after him. The line of his shoulders jerks, as if she'd struck him. "Not just dead but  _rotting!_ "

She cackles, old woman's laughter, dead woman's laughter, but it dies in her throat, turning into something else. Her face is wet, and she puts a hand to it, uncomprehending; she hasn't moved out from under the awning, so why --?

The hand she raises to her face is trembling, and Nami stares at it.

* * *

She doesn't leave the spot, either because time is immaterial to a goddess or because her unwanted emotions are paralyzing. She puts her head in her hands, dragging her fingers through straggling, damp gray curls, and stays put even as the rain ends and the stars come out, followed inevitably by the sun.

It's there Ryotaro finds her, curled on the bench, head in her hands, unnoticed by any who walk by. She doesn't need to look up to know it's him; the scent of his cigarettes, of him, is familiar enough.

He sits beside her on the bench. After a moment, she hears the crackle of a pack, followed by the click of his lighter. "Here," he says, and nudges her hand.

She looks up -- not at his face, she can't bear to look at his face -- and sees that he's holding a lit cigarette. She takes it, notes the faint imprint his lips left, and puts it to her own. The smoke is utterly unlike the mist she usually plays with, and she coughs.

"I've been thinking about what you said," he says, and she flinches. "Let's say it happened exactly as you said. If Chisato -- if she appeared to me like that, if she had changed that much, it wouldn't make what we'd had any less real. But I think . . . if she'd changed so much, it'd mean that she was no longer the woman I'd known. And, most likely, that I was no longer the man she could love."

Izanami remains still a long moment, then nods. He's not wrong.

Ryotaro takes a long drag of his cigarette. Her own burns on, fire edging closer to her skin. "You need help," he says, peering at her in an attempt to look her in the eye. "Probably more help than I can give. But I think I'm willing to try." He pauses, runs one hand through his hair, exhales smoke in something like a laugh. "And you chose the worst possible way to say it, but you did have a point." 

Nami looks up at that, finally seeing his face. He's not angry, or rather, he's angry but that's not all.

He takes another puff of his cigarette as if to draw strength from it, then flicks the half-burned thing away. "It's time I moved on," he says.

Before she can ask what he's talking about, he's moved closer, one hand going to her hair, the other on her shoulder, and he is kissing her. There is still smoke in his mouth, and it passes into her as she opens her mouth in shock.

The spark catches, and for a moment she is full of fire, of life, all responding need to his own. She can't breathe. She can't remember why she should or should not breathe.

She jerks away from him, one hand going to her lips. He looks as shocked as she, and when she turns and runs she does not look back to see if he follows.

* * *

She'll destroy everything. Forget mist and televisions, forget any stupid bargain she made with any stupid mortal, she'll destroy it all. Cast it all into mist and shadow, unleash a thousand monsters every day, every hour, every minute if that's what it takes. If that will undo the smoke, the taste on her lips that will not leave, not even when she disembodies, when she no longer has lips -- that impression  _will not go._

 __Let the other gods excoriate her, let them damn her and cast her out, but she cannot stand this. Wrap them in mist, forget about it all, erase this whole event --

\-- except, a voice says in the back of her head, a voice very like Nami's, that would mean consigning Jiro to the monsters as well. And Mia, and all of Mio's memory. And Noburo, before he's had a chance to train the palates of his customers. All of them, and the brat, and his friends, and Nanako and her goldfish -- all consumed under the mist that she has ready to descend at any moment. 

And Ryotaro, too, she finally admits. He would suffer if she went ahead with this, and she does not want that to happen. To him, or to any of them.

How did this happen? They are insects, mayflies, and yet somehow in her lying and playacting and scorn, they have become more than that. Even as she reviled them and mocked them in her mind, somehow she had become attached to them. She had lied to herself about her motives, without even intending to do so.

It's even more complicated than Ryotaro said. And that, too, hurts more than it ought.

Once more she weaves a body around herself, taking care in its construction, breathing into it the last of the smoke that will not leave her. And with it, she goes to find Ryotaro.

He's where they first met, leaning on the railing by the lamppost. He sees her approach, and his face lights up, but he waits for her to speak. And for that, too, what she has in place of a heart breaks further.

She joins him. No false cigarette this time, but mist still curls about her as it does around the town -- innocent mist, no more than weather. "I'm sorry," she says. "For what I said. And for running. I was stupid, and scared, and confused." She takes a deep breath, a conscious act. "I still am."

Ryotaro smiles. "If it's any consolation, so am I."

She smiles back at him, and for a moment they are as they have been. "I have to go," she says, looking at her hands. "I've been here too long. But I didn't want to go. Not without being with you."

She glances at him, seeing his expression change from heartbreak to confusion to shock as he realizes what she's asking of him. "Are you sure?"

 _No_ , Izanami thinks. "Yes," Nami says.

He steps closer, enough that she can feel his warmth. "Now?"

She nods.  _Before my resolve fails._

 __"Now," he repeats, his voice dropping to a whisper. He clears his throat. "Just -- just let me call the station, so they don't interrupt --" He stops himself before that goes further.

At that Nami laughs, and steps aside while he makes the call. He fumbles with the phone as he gets it out of his pocket. "This is Dojima -- what? Shirogane, what are you doing on desk duty? I don't care if it is broken, get whatshisname to make you a sling. You belong out in the field, and tell them I said so." He runs a shaky hand through his hair. "Anyway, I'm taking the rest of the day off. Yes, I have the time saved up. Just make sure no one panics if they can't reach me. And if Nanako calls, tell her I'll just be a little late." He stumbles a little on the last word, looking at Nami.

Nami smiles at him, thinking of the little girl and her request. And that is another promise -- she'll have him back to his daughter, unharmed.

Ryotaro ends the call, then switches off his phone. "Shirogane," he says. "Good kid, but kind of stodgy. Owes me a favor, though, ever since I caught her and that Tatsumi punk in the evidence room --" He stops a hand's width from her. "I'm babbling. Sorry."

"It's all right," Nami says. She takes his hand and leads him into the mist.

There are only so many possible places -- the gods of bower and grove are terrible gossips, and those who watch over hotels are worse. In the end, she makes a quick decision, and Ryotaro shows no surprise when she leads him to the gates of a stately home older than the Amagi Inn. She touches two fingers to his lips. "Don't say my name," she says. "And I will not say yours."

"I understand," he says, and the movement of his lips against her fingers makes her shiver.

The proprietress -- a white snake in human form -- marks him as human, and her as not. But she has her own history in other forms, and her smile is sympathetic and sorrowful. Less so her handmaid the blue fish, whose grin is almost enough to make Izanami invoke a minor curse on the smug little thing.

And then the room, and the bed, and the door closing behind them.

Ryotaro hangs his jacket over a chair, but seems at a loss. Carefully, holding herself together and shivering with terror as much as anything else, Nami puts a hand to his chest, her fingertips brushing the hollow of his throat. He lays one hand over hers, then raises his other hand to her hair. "I'm . . . it's been a long time for me," he says.

"For me too." And though he means years and she means millennia, they are speaking of the exact same span of time. She smiled at him, a little of her fear receding, and kisses him.

He returns the kiss, gentle and hesitant at first, and then as the tip of her tongue brushes his lips, he gives a stifled groan and pulls her closer, cupping the back of her head. Smoke kindles through her, and she catches her breath between kisses. 

Somehow there is no longer any question of how to do this, how to manage body and body. It seems entirely natural for the two of them to stumble back against the bed, for him to sit down heavily, pulling her with him, entirely natural for her to fall astride him so that her skirt hikes up her thighs. One of the buttons on her shirt goes flying, and he apologizes breathlessly. He slides her shirt from her shoulders inch by inch, as if that impatience is all he will allow himself. Her skin warms under his fingers, like paper touched by flame, and when she rolls her hips just so he groans, his mouth hot against the curve of her breasts.

The buttons of his shirt give her trouble -- Western fashion, good for a mask but how does it work? -- and finally she gives up and yanks it over his head. She's forgotten his tie, which ends up askew over one ear. Ryotaro laughs, and she does too, and then their laughter is swallowed in each other's mouth. She rocks her hips again, and he curses, bucking against her, then seizes her and rolls them over, onto the center of the bed.

And because this -- or at least the theory of it -- is not new to either of them, they know the paths and can slow to savor skin on skin, touch and discovery. If he notices that her skin is cool until he touches it, he does not say so, drawing warmth and breath from her with his mouth and his long, eloquent fingers. She knows her responses, even after so long; she knows to shift so that a direct caress becomes indirect and even more exquisite. He knows to catch her hand, saying "not yet, not now, I'll --" and kiss her again, smoke still on his tongue, breathing from one to the other. And yet his gasp as she moves against him speaks of something new, just as his long caress from ankle to hip is entirely unfamiliar and delicious.

 _It is too much_ , she thinks suddenly, too much for this fragile flesh to hold together. She cries out when he enters her, and he pauses tense above her, whispering endearments, affirmations, kissing her face and shoulders to reassure them both. Too much; she is full of fire, he is heat and smoke within her. She clings to him desperately, to life as much as to him, even as she rises to meet him. She can feel herself shattering, coming apart at the seams like a plan well-laid, like a veil torn aside.

For an instant, an eternity, she is lost entirely, and the one here is neither woman nor goddess nor corpse but the force that moved them all, the yin that created half a world, remaking it all as if the world were beginning again.

It passes, a human instant, a shudder of nerves and spasm of flesh, and she clutches at Ryotaro, shaken beyond possibility. The room is full of mist -- surely he has noticed that if by some chance he was oblivious to the moment's apotheosis. But he is not looking at the mist, he is looking only at her, his brow pressed against hers, and their rhythm remains unbroken.

Unbroken but quickening, as control slips from him as well. Almost he calls her name, but he presses his mouth to her collarbone, muffling any cry against her, and heat floods through them both.

And for a time they lie together, still joined, their breath returning to normal, the mist fading around them until at last they are again only man and woman.

* * *

He sits up in bed and watches her dress, his last cigarette dangling from his fingers. He tells her it's because he is in no hurry, but they both know it's so he can imprint the sight of her in his memory. As she is doing for him; the sight of him naked but for the sheet around his hips is one that will last as long as she does.

"In the corner," he says as she stops to look for her skirt. "I think."

"You think?" she says, managing a smile that's almost Nami's usual one.

He shrugs. "I wasn't really paying attention to where the clothes ended up, so long as they weren't on us."

"So I see." She holds up his pants, flung next to her skirt, and lays them over the end of the bed. Skirt, now; shirt too, though she leaves it unbuttoned for now. "You won't see me again," she says, pulling on one sleeve after another. "I'm sorry."

"To be honest," he says slowly, "for the last couple of months, I've been expecting you to turn into a crane and fly away any moment."

The allusion surprises her, but no more than the realization with it: two months, he's guessed something of her nature for two months. A voice very like Nami's whispers  _and for two months he has loved you_.

Her eyes prickle with hot tears, and she blinks them back, keeping that little heat for herself. "Nothing so low-class," she says, kneeling beside him on the bed. She cups his face in her hand and kisses him, a long, sweet kiss that both of them know is farewell.

They remain that way briefly, lips close, touching each other's face. Then Nami gets up, smiles, and walks away.

Outside the door, she dissolves into mist, lingering a moment longer. When he leaves, jacket over his shoulder as if he were just stepping out, the mists part before him, granting him a clear path home.


End file.
